Chapter 29 TREE OF HEARTS
TREE OF HEARTS
It was Tiff who eventually found me: I’d sloughed off my bedsheets after a solid cry and had jogged my way down the boardwalk to the clearing with the Heart Tree.
I’d been there for an hour before hurrying up to Lorraine’s for some snacks and a bathroom break, then returned for some additional poor mes.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Tiff said gently. ‘Rosie told me what she said to you. About selling the Pink House.’
‘I can’t believe she’s even thinking about it,’ I said, scuffing my toe through the sand. I sighed. ‘I understand why, of course. I want to run away from everything, and what I’m dealing with is a fraction of Rosie’s stress and hurt. I just can’t believe that this might be our last Summerween.’
Tiff dropped down beside me, nibbling the rest of my chocolate croissant as she gazed out at the calm ocean.
She took a deep breath, as though she were about to say something, but didn’t.
Perhaps she needed a moment. I certainly did.
As I had at least a dozen times since I’d camped out here earlier this afternoon, I shuffled over to the Heart Tree, running a finger over all the proclamations of love carved into it, shivering as tiny memories burst up in front of me: two college kids promising to stick together despite going to school in different states, two girls with eighties perms embracing passionately; an elderly couple returning to re-carve their missive from decades before.
And then Josephine’s carving, which fizzled into nothingness at my touch.
There was something about the hollowness of it that broke my heart.
‘I can’t believe she chose neither of them,’ I said.
But then I thought of Josephine’s evasiveness when I’d directly asked her about her love life: We’re not here to talk about me. We’re here to talk about you.
I thought of what Keiko had said. Sure, there was something to choosing yourself, but only when that was the right choice, and not a choice made out of fear.
‘She didn’t,’ said Tiff gently. She pressed her fingertips to the tree, and a set of initials appeared there in searing purple – just for an instant. E. M.
‘She chose Emmett? The rich guy?’
I frowned. So she had made a decision? If that was the case, then why …
‘She chose wrong,’ said Tiff. ‘She took so long to make her choice that there wasn’t really a choice left. She married Emmett in the end, but she couldn’t live with it. So she—’
‘Wait, she didn’t kill him, did she?’
Tiff shot me a sad smile. ‘No, nothing like that. They just lived unhappily for a few years. Then they separated. She tried to erase the whole experience using magic. The ring, the tree, the town records. I asked the whisperwinds. And Betty at the library,’ she explained.
‘Betty knows all the gossip. She’s like the embodiment of lore. ’
Ah. Of course.
‘Anyway,’ said Tiff meaningfully. ‘History has a habit of rhyming.’
‘Josephine didn’t listen to her heart,’ I said, looking down sadly at my ring with its row of dark moonstones.
‘She didn’t. Which is why it’s so important that you do.’ Tiff sighed. ‘And that I do as well.’
I cocked my head. ‘What do you mean? This isn’t about you and Damien, is it? Or Leon? I’ve seen the way you look at him.’
Tiff shrugged. ‘It is, but it isn’t. You’re not the only one who has a decision to make, Molly. I think the one I need to face is what it’s going to take to find my happiness. Because three a.m. Zoom calls and care packages just aren’t it.’
‘You’re breaking up with Damien? But you can’t do that. I’ll fight for Damien’s honour. I don’t actually know what fighting for someone’s honour involves, but I’ll do it. I really will.’
She laughed. ‘You won’t need to do anything like that.
It’s just … Molly, I’m moving overseas. For good.
Damien and I are going to open a B&B in Portugal.
I’ve been spending time talking to the owners of the one Lara’s staying at, and with Leon, whose family used to run one, hence the whole Hotels of the World book-signing thing. I think I know how to make it work.’
‘Wait, that’s why you’ve been spending so much time with Lara? And Leon. I thought you were just enjoying pretending to be single.’
Tiff huffed good-naturedly. ‘Definitely not. As cute as Leon is, what that book signing told me is that yes, I want to be able to spend time with the person I love face to face. In the same time zone, eating off the same plate, drinking out of the same glass. Well, maybe not the same glass. Backwash.’ She made a face.
‘But that person is Damien. I love being around him, and I don’t want to spend another three years with half the world between us. ’
My eyes smarted with tears. I was happy for Tiff – after all, she’d made the decision she’d been wrestling with since she’d arrived – and yet devastated that closing the distance between her and Damien meant that there’d be distance between us.
Yes, Tiff might spend a good part of the year jet-setting around and racking up frequent-flyer points, but she always made it home for the major holidays. Especially Summerween.
Perhaps this really was going to be our last Summerween. If so, I owed it to everyone – and my heart – to make it a good one.